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Holy jumped up green pasta monster on a stick. My internet connection goes down for a little while and the whole world goes stark raving mad. I get re-connected and my world almost caves in.

What gives?

My hosting company managed to let the void eat everything and helped to convert lordmatt.co.uk to a screaming 403 error set. How many times have I told them that void needs to be on a tight rope... damn them.

I was soon getting hooked back up after my new kit arrived no less than three days late (along with a computer case that looked like it had been used as a football in the ultra-psyco wing of the hyper-unreal total psyco holding prision).

A-ha, cries I, I can try out skype.

But: no skype for you boy-o, cried my ISP, we're going to cock up the PPP of your connection and then suggest you change your micro-filter (then we'll reset your password a few times and carry out a line test) and generally try to treat you like some newbi (l)user... After that we'll put you on hold for half an hour before giving you a new phone number to call... as you can imagine I have not been a happy bunny. Especially as I have a code release due for monday gone (it's sitting here waiting for you). (It'll be up sometime...)

Then my wife is rushed into hospital and everything looks black and I feel like telling everything to stick it where the sun don't shine. Fortunatly it was good news in the morning but even so it's utter chaos in our house as the wife is on strict bed rest and the kids are suddenly mine all day.

Well, having finally gotten things working on the IT side of things I set about downloading and installing skype. After all, when one purchases a large number of ear-mic sets one usually needs an aplication to use them with.

Well blow me if I don't discover that all is not good in the nest and Skype and Intel have been getting togeather to do miscrosoft-esk evil by refusing to allow 10-way calling on the better AMD chip...

The 10-way calling feature will be exclusive to Intel's chips for a limited time, Gomez said. Skype is not releasing the time frame for the expiration of the exclusive agreement, he said. linklinklink

Thank screaming pasta for the reverse engineering community is all I can say: "...software hacker finds workaround for skype/intel lockout" [link]

It seems Maxxuss took exception to the bad karma from Intel and worked a tasty (if possibly illeagle) patch out:
link, link, link, link

Fortunatly, AMD know what side the bread is buttered and slapped a "WTF" on skype: "As part of its ongoing antitrust case against Intel, Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday served Skype with a subpoena demanding documents related to its deal to make one feature in Skype 2.0 available exclusively to Intel users." link

"A Skype executive declined to comment earlier this month when asked whether the company had tested the performance of its software on both Intel's and AMD's dual-core chips. An Intel representative confirmed that there are no instructions that specifically enhance the performance of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software like Skype's in Intel's dual-core chips. He also said that Skype's software is using a function called "GetCPUID" to permit 10-way conference calls only when that function detects an Intel dual-core processor on start-up."

With all that crap it put pay to my big spend of company money into the group. I had planned to commit my company Adullam Limited to using Skype as a portable and cost effective alternative to a call centre. No fear mate, not a dime from the grand and a bit outreach budget for this quater untill I sure there is no worth-while alternative that we can use in the mean time.

All that while I choose to re-do my blog again.

I'm thinking that maybe the use of the tempalte var smart tag...

Anyway a quick bodge has comments for non-members working again so now I can get feedback yay for comments...